The long-running attempt to reshape Welsh professional rugby has suffered another blow, with the proposed Cardiff-Y11 ownership deal collapsing and More Squidge Rugby warning that the Welsh Rugby Union's three-region plan is now more contested than ever. A week on from the EGM that featured a vote of confidence in outgoing WRU figures Malcolm Wall and Richard Collier-Keywood, the fan-facing dimension of the restructure is as murky as it has been at any point in the process.
"World rugby, do you know the thing about world rugby?" host Robbie Owen asked at the top of the episode. "It carries on. It just keeps happening. It will not stop. And nor will this uncertainty for another couple of years."
The headline, confirmed in the podcast, is that the Y11 bid, backed by the Ospreys' existing ownership group, to buy Cardiff Rugby has fallen through. Squidge Rugby reported that six bids had been tabled for Cardiff, including a high-profile consortium led by Martin Ryan of Rhino Rugby that also counted Hollywood producers among its backers. "The leading bid, the biggest bid, was one from a consortium that was the Hollywood lot led by Martin Ryan," the podcast said. "A consortium of Hollywood producers and so on that made basically a bunch of average Liam Neeson movies, but also worked on The Irishman with Martin Scorsese." That bid was not chosen.
Instead, the podcast said, Richard Collier-Keywood had pushed Y11 to take Cardiff, a move Squidge Rugby argued was less about fit than about smoothing the WRU's own three-region pathway. "Richie Collier-Keywood very much pushed Y11, the Ospreys' owners, to go in for Cardiff, because that would give them an easy solution to get down to three teams," the podcast said. The logic, it explained, is that if the Y11 group took on Cardiff, it could quietly wind down its Ospreys investment, allowing the union to end up with the desired three-region model with a minimum of public fight.
Squidge Rugby also seized on an exchange from a post-EGM press interview given by the WRU's Abi Tierney, the full-time CEO of the governing body, in which she was asked pointedly about the consultation that had underpinned the reform decision. "I thought it was really good, a bit of, like, finally someone asked about that," the podcast said. "Abi Tierney said, 'We never intended for that to lead our decision.' The part of the consultation that was going to lead what we were going to do was them consulting business leaders and other people, but they never had to listen to the fans."
The podcast's hosts pushed back on the framing of the reform as settled. "She kind of let that slide in passing, and I think not enough attention went on that," one said. "As with any sports fans, some of them are idiots, so you don't want to let that rule everything. And these people, whether we like it or not, are experts in this field, or they're supposed to be, legally they are experts in this, with a big E. But this is the people you're trying to appease."
The collapse of the Y11-Cardiff deal effectively re-opens the question of what happens to the Ospreys, and by extension whether Wales ends up with three or four professional teams at all. "That is the big question now," the podcast said. "If Y11 aren't buying Cardiff, then what is the plan? Because there's no clean way out of this now."
The Squidge view, delivered with its usual mix of grim humour and granular detail, is that the WRU's reform process has given itself two more unresolved years. The EGM tidied up a governance vote. It did not settle the question that actually matters to supporters: which Welsh teams will exist in 2027, who will own them, and whether the people paying to watch them have any remaining influence over the answer.
